WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING - Big Money Can Buy Your Vote, Supreme Court Drops 100 Years Of Reform

(05/20/2012)

COMMENT by Bob Weaver 2010

It's pretty well confirmed.

America is now a Corpocracy, a form of government where corporations, conglomerates or government entities with private components, control the governance of the country.

With the absence of populist government, the powerful will relentlessty take away from the weak.

A divided US Supreme Court upheld that American corporations, unions and businesses can spend endless sums in affecting the outcome of elections.

It will almost be impossible for a populist candidate with good ideas to be elected against.

The case was brought by corporate sponsored Citizens United.

The decision was made in favor of the "free speech rights" of powerful corporations, giving corporations the same rights as individuals have in the USA.

West Virginians should be pretty familiar with this practice.

It essentially ends 100 years of attempting to reform campaign finance.

Power brokers can now spend millions and millions to sway elections for a president or members of Congress and in state races,

Election history says they who have the most gold will glitter.

They usually win.

About six American corporations mow own most of America's mainstream media, who have variously reported on this historic development.

In an era that is dominated by negative political ads, voters will have to gird their loins against those with the biggest war chests.

Politicians will be under extreme pressure to heed to special interests over election money, in addition to the billions of dollars spent annually by lobbyists.

With the court's 5-4 ruling, grass-roots candidates won't have a snowballs chance, their voices drowned.

It reaffirms the trend toward Corporate Government, that our great American experiment is ruled by big money.

In the USA, many of the biggest corporations pay no taxes, while making record breaking profits during the worst economic period since the Great Depression, and taxpayer money continues to flow by the billions to some of those corporations to help them along.

Meanwhile, the nation media rarely reports that the globalization of millions of jobs has anything to do with America's joblessness.

In most national polls, beyond all the left and right rhetoric, most Americans are already holding Congress below the ratings of a stereotypical used car salesmen.

The court overturned several earlier decisions and threw out parts of a 63-year-old law that said companies and unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their campaign ads.

They also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, long held to the heart of Sen. John McCain. In part, it barred union and corporate issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

The justices weighed two fundamental political forces - the power of the central government and the concentration of corporate wealth - and tilted decidedly in favor of the latter.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Constitution expresses the right of the public to be exposed to a multitude of ideas and against the ability of government to limit political speech, even in the interest of fighting corruption.

Dissenting, Justice John Paul Stevens said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

President Obama called the decision a victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and other powerful interests.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader who filed the first lawsuit challenging the McCain-Feingold law, praised the court for "restoring the First Amendment rights" of corporations and unions.

"It's going to be the Wild Wild West," said Ben Ginsberg, a Republican attorney who has represented several GOP presidential campaigns.

"If corporations and unions can give unlimited amounts ... it means that the public debate is significantly changed with a lot more voices and it means that the loudest voices are going to be corporations and unions."

A Corpocracy appoints powerful corporate decision makers within government institutions, a trend that has continued for many years in Washington.

Perhaps the most serious reprecussion is voters, in discust just staying away from the polls, threastening the basic foundation of America's democratic form of government.